Throwback Friday

 In yesterday's Throwback Thursday post, I showed the difference between a bumblebee and a carpenter bee. There was some discussion about a bee vs. a wasp, so today I am rerunning a post that I did about that. This one is from May 2015.

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A Second Look Update--Bees

Smaller bee with larger ones to the side

I admit that, as far as bees go, I have very limited knowledge. To me, anything that buzzes and looks like it could sting is a bee. But as most of you know, not everything that looks like that is a bee. Some of them are wasps. And no matter how many times I try to learn the differences between the two, I don't remember for very long what they are. So here it goes again.

A papery, yellow jacket wasp's nest that I found
in the ground while I was weeding.
Yes, I did get stung.

Bees and wasps come from the same Order, Hymenoptera. After that, they differ in their Family, Genus, and Species. (Remember the taxonomy classifications for biology?) If you can get close enough to look at them, there are some physical differences. Bees are hairy, and wasps are smooth. Bees usually have a fatter and rounder abdomen than wasps. And if the buzzing insect is chasing you, it's probably a wasp. Wasps are more aggressive than bees. Find a papery nest in the ground; it belongs to a wasp. Bees make waxy hives. All bees are social insects, but not all wasps are. Some are solitary. Bees eat nectar, but wasps usually eat other insects, unless, of course, you have a can of soda around. 

And the list goes on. There are over 20,000 different species of bees and over 100,000 different kinds of wasps, so if I'm playing the odds, wasps should be my first guess when I'm trying to identify one or the other.

Even though I refamiliarized myself with some basic bee and wasp knowledge, I was at a loss to explain what I saw about a month ago during a Second Look. I saw a smaller bee/wasp attach itself to the bottom of a different kind of bee/wasp. So it was time to go for help. The first place I turned was my bee expert--a friend who raises honey bees. I sent her pictures and asked her what was going on. She had no idea, so she sent them to her local county extension agent. The extension agent had no idea what was going on, either, so she sent them to an entomology professor she knew at a large university. He didn't have a good answer, so he showed the pictures to all of his colleagues. And none of them could give a good explanation of what they saw. 

Smaller bee attached to the bottom of larger bee

However, here is the information that they did provide for what they saw in the pictures above.

The responses I have gathered from my colleagues agree that this type of interaction with carpenter bees* is unusual. Bees sometimes get in territorial disputes, but this doesn't appear to be the case in the pic.  Everyone agrees that the bee on the carpenter bee is probably not doing any harm.  Based on what they could tell from the photo and the host plant they are on, they believe the other bee is in the genus Osmia (e.g., blue orchard bee).  Why they are interacting like this is unclear. 

So I didn't get a definitive answer to my question, but I did learn a lot while looking for an answer. Now, let's see how long I can remember it. :)

*I called the big bees bumble bees in the original post, but they're not. They are carpenter bees as evidenced by their smooth abdomen. If they had been bumble bees, this area would have been hairy. Live and learn.

But Wait There's More:
--Did you know that male bees don't sting? The stinger is a modification of an ovipositer--an egg layer, so male bees have never had one to modify. This may be common knowledge for those of you in the know, but it was fascinating news to me.
--A good paint job is a good deterrent to the carpenter bees.

Sources:
http://www.diffen.com/difference/Bee_vs_Wasp

http://animals.pawnation.com/there-kind-bee-doesnt-sting-10377.html

http://www.everythingabout.net/articles/biology/animals/arthropods/insects/bees/

And some others that disappeared when my computer crashed. :(

Throwback Thursday

 Today, we're going back to June 2015, when I showed the difference between bumble bees and carpenter bees. I have since also learned that the carpenter bees usually show up earlier in the season than bumble bees, and they like the wooden bench on the front porch. Some day, the bench is going to fall down with all of the holes in it. As soon as we plug up one hole, a new one is drilled.

So, here's the throwback to June 18, 2015, which BTW was also on a Thursday. 

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More about Bees

I have explained before that I don't have much knowledge about bees or wasps, but I'm very slowly learning. This week, I was finally able to document one of the differences between carpenter bees and bumble bees. Before this year, big, yellow, and black striped bees were all bumble bees to me. As it turns out, I learned that carpenter bees look similar to bumble bees; however, carpenter bees are larger and have smoother abdomens, while bumble bees have furry abdomens. And from my experience, bumble bees move a lot faster and more often from bloom to bloom. So for a few weeks now, I thought I had been seeing bumble bees instead of carpenter bees, but they wouldn't hold still long enough to know for sure. Yesterday, I finally got a picture that confirmed my suspicions.

Notice the fuzzy abdomen of the bumblebee on the left and the smooth abdomen of the carpenter bee on the right.

So my knowledge is slowly increasing. Who knows? Maybe soon I will be able to reliably tell a bee from a wasp at first sight. Or maybe not. :)

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Until next time...

Live and Learn

I think we all learn something every day. That's just part of living. Sometimes it's big, and sometimes it's small. From time to time, I think that I should do a regular feature here about things I've learned, you know, because I have Live and Learn in the name of my blog. However, my follow-through is not always the best.😏 But today, I'm going to make it happen. Here it goes. Some things I've learned recently.

It took way too long to put this sticky straw
around the tomato plants.

1. Straw made for covering up grass seeding is very sticky. Occasionally, we buy a bale of straw to mulch around various plants. Last fall, we bought a bale at our local Southern States like we always do. However, it was very difficult to pull apart. Annoyingly so. It turns out that we got straw coated with something sticky to be used for seeding, so that it won't blow away. You can be sure that we will be very careful when we purchase straw again to know what kind we're buying.

Costco chicken

2. Costco's Kirkland Signature brand is 30 years old, and the worldwide celebration for this is happening at a Maryland depot. (Knowing these kinds of things happens when your son works there.) I think the most popular Kirkland product is the $4.99 rotisserie chicken. Costco sells enough of them that they raise their own chickens, and last year, they sold over 157 million. However, I consulted with Theo, and he said that if you didn't count gasoline, the most popular item is probably toilet paper. :)

3. Speaking of Costco, their stores are called warehouses, and their distribution centers are called depots. Theo works in a depot. I confused the two when I first learned this.

It's been over a month, and
I'm still waiting on this parsley to sprout.

4. If it's important or takes a lot of prep work, it pays to use newer seeds. I planted 6 packages of old seeds, and only two (seeds, not packets) of them sprouted. There were some flowers, some veggies, some in pots, some in the ground. All of these were a hopeful experiment, and luckily, the lack of results is not of much consequence. On the things that really mattered to me, like tomatoes, I used newer seeds.

These peas have been good both for pod eating and shelling.

5. Peas come in purple and yellow varieties. Uncle Billy gave me some extra pea seeds he had that have purple and yellow pods. I've only seen green ones before. The peas are doing well (new seeds), and it's fun to see the new varieties.

This is what the peas look like on the inside--more like the peas I know.

Well, nothing earth-shattering in this list. It's funny how I know that I'm processing new information all the time, but nothing much came to mind as I was writing this. Maybe I should keep a list. We'll see how I do with follow-through on that. 😀

Until next time...

Thankful Sunday

 I am thankful for the kindness of strangers.

Last Tuesday, Ward and I went with friends to see a John Prine tribute concert at Wolf Trap. Wolf Trap is a National Park for the Performing Arts in Virginia. The stage is surrounded by open-air covered seating and lawn seating, and is a magical place to watch a concert (if the weather cooperates, which it did).

When we made our way back to our car, we found the battery was dead. After a bit of asking around, we found someone with jumper cables and someone else who gave our car a jump. Soon, we were finding our way home.

So, for the kindness of strangers who helped us start our car, I am thankful.

Throwback Thursday

 It's time for another Throwback Thursday, when I will visit a post from the past that was from the same week. (As an aside, when I think about it, Throwback Thursdays were popular years ago, so maybe the concept of doing a Throwback Thursday is a throwback in itself.😄)

Today, we're going back to June 2011 when we had been strawberry picking. I haven't noticed local strawberries being available yet, but I should look around because the season is short.

Without further ado...

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Strawberries for Now

It's strawberry season. That time when the aromatic, sweet, and juicy strawberries are ripe. We were very fortunate this year because Aunt Martha had a lush strawberry patch that she shared with us. We quickly consumed the first batch of berries we picked, but luckily, we were invited to pick more.

Strawberries from Aunt Martha

Wally was excited with this prospect and started discussing everything we could do with them—make strawberry shortcake, make smoothies, make jam, and the list went on. 

So we set off one afternoon to go picking. As we were picking, Wally asked me if I remembered one of his favorite books from when he was a child, called Blueberries for Sal. 

In this book, a little girl named Sal goes blueberry picking with her mother but finds herself eating the berries faster than they can fill the bucket. He said he was reminded of the book because he was doing something similar. However, we did end up with some to take home.

When we poured our berries into a container, there weren't as many as we had hoped for, but we still planned to make strawberry jam. However, when I returned to the kitchen a couple of hours later, all of the berries were gone. I guess the fresh berries were just too tempting.

Now you see them.       Now you don't.

I started to be annoyed, but changed my mind. We could enjoy the strawberries now, or we could enjoy them later, and I guess now was okay. I reminded myself about the practice that is hard for me—being in the moment. That helped. Then I didn't feel so guilty about my part in the disappearing berries.

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Until next time...